ABSTRACT
Analysing data from an ethnographic study of anatomy labs through the lens of embodied cognition and rhetorical theory, this chapter argues against an anti-representational position by demonstrating how scientific and medical knowledge is enacted through material interactions that depend on two forms of representational work—mental image-making and analogy-like model-making—both of which rely on forms of language-in-action (namely discursive and rhetorical modes). Rather than see linguistic and imagistic representation as at odds with materiality (an old regime that new materialism will overthrow), I will argue that proper attention to the materiality of embodied interaction requires a careful attention to representational components of those actions.
